“Shark Tank” co-star Kevin O’Leary said on Thursday that Vice President Kamala Harris’ tax plan will destroy the American Dream.
Harris plans to implement a 25% tax on unrealized capital gains for individuals making more than $100 million in wealth and raise the corporate tax rate from its current 21% to 28%, according to The Wall Street Journal. O’Leary said on Fox News’ “The Story with Martha MacCallum” that Harris’ plan will destroy American businesses and make the U.S. unable to compete with global businesses.
“The idea to raise capital gains tax, to make America uncompetitive. You gotta think about capital. We’re the number one economy on earth, most foreign capital wants to invest in America because it’s competitive. But when all of a sudden you make us — and I’m looking at the G20, all the countries where your sovereign wealth, you want to put $100,000 billion to work and infrastructure — you care about capital gains tax. You care about the corporate tax rate … Why do you want to punish them for success?”
“So at the end of the day, when you make yourself so uncompetitive in the plethora of economies that compete with us and all of a sudden say, ‘corporate tax rates are the highest now, we’re in the bottom quartile of competition,’ it’ll be like what happened when we had 28%-plus corporate taxes, when companies started going to Ireland. We already tried this, it doesn’t work … This is a really, really, really bad idea. Incredibly bad policy,” O’Leary continued.
Kevin O’Leary says Kamala Harris’ tax plan will destroy the American Dream pic.twitter.com/O2oSPnE053
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) August 29, 2024
O’Leary said the capital gains tax policy would “punish American entrepreneurs” that will force many people to want to leave America.
“We do not want to punish American entrepreneurs,” O’Leary said. “The number one export of America is not a product or a service, it’s the American Dream. That’s the number one export. Don’t mess with the American Dream! There’s a reason people try to get through barbed wire to get in here, we don’t want to set a policy up where they’re trying to get out of America. That’s what I see, and I don’t like it.”
O’Leary criticized Harris’ plan to levy a federal ban on so-called “price gouging” on groceries, which has received pushback over accusations that it amounts to price fixing. O’Leary said the “un-American” plan will be impossible to implement and has failed everywhere it has been tried.
“I think it’s a very populist idea, impossible to implement,” O’Leary said. “It would never pass Congress. So she seems to be throwing a lot of stuff at the wall, I understand why she’s doing it, she’s being encouraged by what she’s seeing in the polling. But a lot of these proposals have not been scrutinized by you, reporters, on a one-on-one interview on how it’ll be implemented. This is an incredibly bad idea, tried in the ’70’s in America, doesn’t work in Venezuela, North Korea, anywhere. It’s un-American.”
O’Leary criticized Harris’ plan to build 3 million homes in the U.S. and give first-time homebuyers $25,000 in down payment assistance, saying it is unrealistic that any state will grant the federal government a loan to build 3 million homes. The investor said an individual selling their home will simply raise the price if each buyer is handed $25,000.
“This idea is beyond inane. It is the worst policy I’ve ever heard and everyone in real estate knows it’s a non-starter. That’s the second idea I know would never stick, would never get through Congress,” O’Leary said.
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